Moderator: This is the second part of a three part exchange between David Marquand and Anthony Barnett, the first of which is here. The final part will be published tomorrow.
Anthony Barnett (London, OK):
Dear David,
Thank you very much for your dramatic and challenging post. It focuses unerringly on a weakness in my argument, and it poses two really big issues.
One is about how time is built into a constitution. This is an incredibly interesting question. I don't know anyone who has written about it systematically, though someone must have. You contrast the US enlightenment ‘fixed' model and the EU's Monnet style post-modern or ‘project' model. By the way, I agree with you about the inspired approach of the latter. The incremental transformation he advocated has proved far more revolutionary than the insurrectionary model of the left, as others have noted. Ungar advocates just such a democratic politics in What should the Left Propose. He refuses to be called ‘a utopian'. Rather, he argues, it is practical to set a direction towards a far-off goal but then proceeding in an inventive, experimental fashion. Yes, this approach is built into the European project, uniquely so. There is a downside I'll mention in a moment. But you have put your finger on the dynamic of the EU which most pro-European politicians and papers in Britain do not acknowledge and causes them much grief.
This is another warming up parenthesis! But the classic pro-European politics in Britain argues in favour of our being part of what Europe currently is, but it does not want Europe to change! This is the consensual position in British politics, namely that we should be ‘in' it, but ‘enough is enough' (shared with only a slight difference by both Brown and Cameron). It is not that it isn't honest, it simply does not make sense because to be in the EU, as you so well describe, is to be part of a process that is on the move. The antis then seem to become paranoid when they allege that the EU is a plot to undermine us (which it openly is, in that it is a plan for moving forward to greater unity).
If the US Constitution is a fixed, Enlightenment one, however, and the EU's is a post-modern project-centred one, then Britain's is a pre-modern but flexible one. The English constitution was always a modernising one: in this sense it too was purposive. Its famous flexibility ensured that while unified in terms of what we now call parliamentary sovereignty, it was always the means to power a modernising state, which is why it has lasted so long, and could build so amazing an Empire. At first, say from 1707 to 1939, its supple impulse was imperial and expansionist. From 1941 and since its "finest hour" it has become preservative. Today, its adaptability is expressed in terms of bending with the winds of change. It looks backward. This, then, creates bad faith, especially with respect to European membership. With devolution and the rise of judicial power my view is that the UK's inherited, flexible in order to preserve constitution is finally broken. But a flexible not fixed relationship to time and change was built into it, and as I suggest in my ‘dream speech' this is a virtue that needs to be retained in any new settlement.
‘Time' then, can be built into constitutions in different ways. It is easy to demonstrate this with the highly outdated but familiar American example. As you say, its checks and balances between the different centres of power were fixed. One result now is a racially gerrymandered and reactionary Senate, no federal right to vote, the definition of ‘money' as ‘voice', and a polity trapped in the past. But the real US constitution is more than the actual single document. As Garry Wills has shown in his brilliant book, in legal terms Lincoln constitutionally justified the civil war in terms of the Declaration of Independence not the Constitution. The former's famous declaration of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness became an inspiring claim on the future for American citizens. I argue that ‘aspiration' is one of the three defining aspects of all constitutions (along with the relations of individual citizens to the state and the definitions of powers between different centres of authority). And on aspiration the US scores with something dynamic rather than fixed.
Alas, here in the UK our official aspiration remains to be good subjects! While the big problem for Europe is that while its institutional relations are dynamic, just as you describe, its public aspiration is nugatory. It remains an elite project.
In this respect, public suspicion of the EU in the UK has democratic legitimacy. This is what I was trying to get at - and I want to make sure you know that I have always seen a new constitution as dynamic. To quote myself, from This Time:
"The introduction of a written constitution requires both insight into traditional forces and an eye for the new global realities that have penetrated British society with great rapidity. The outcome will certainly not create the alleged checks and balances of the Enlightenment. On the contrary, the background of reform is the future. Catching up will also be an opening up to what has been termed the ‘democratisation of democracy', which has only just begun."
One aspect of this future is to build in the actual reality of sharing sovereignty with the EU and its member states. This requires an honest recognition of the EU's future oriented character in our own constitution. Then we can also demand that it accords to our principles. For example, the German constitutional court ruled on the Maastricht Treaty. Its judgement, I think, was that it just qualified in terms of its democratic legitimacy, but any further expansion would have to demonstrate it had grounding in public legitimacy.
As you say, there is the option of leaving. It would only be England that so chooses, I'm sure. An off-shore Switzerland might not in fact be the patsy of the US, especially if shorn of its Scottish nuclear facilities. But the heart of my argument that the new British constitution builds relations with Europe into it is not purely negative (though my ‘dream speech' emphasised that rhetorically, I concede). It should be positive. It has to try and end the bad faith, making us conscious of ourselves as part of Europe. It is better to have that argument and lose it than not have it at all.
Very best
Anthony
